The Funnies - First Lap of 2019 (1919)

Starting on the first lap of the year.

A combination of the funnies and a 100 years ago post today, the beginning of 1919 in kitten terms. From Life magazine's, January 1919 issue.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone, may your frog-opened bottles of hooch contain horse shoes and magic mushrooms!

Fletcherizing - Considerations for Your New Year's Resolutions

Whatever your opinion of modern medicine, you can always find something crazier in the past. Take this little comic from an August 1909 issue of Punch Magazine.

Fletcherism
The Disciple - Now, waiter, you may bring me the fish.

Fletcherism or "The Chewing Diet" got its name not from a doctor, but from a San Francisco art dealer who purportedly lost more than 40 pounds through chewing his food until it became liquefied and the spitting out what was left. He also advised chewing not only solids, but liquids...so masticate that coffee, fella. And he believed you should only eat (if that's what you call chewing stuff up and spitting it out) when "good and hungry", angry, or sad...personally, being made to chew my tea only to spit it out would make me both angry and sad.

Fletcher saw the machine as an analog for the human body. He compared food to fuel, blood to steam, the pulse to a steam gauge, the heart to an engine, and waste to ash. It was the ash that seemed to fascinate him most, though. He advocated teaching children to examine their own waste, claiming if they were healthy it wouldn't smell and would have no evidence of bacteria.

Nine years after this cartoon ran, Fletcher died of bronchitis, or as he might see it a bad air filter. By that time calorie counting had already started replacing Fletcherizing. I never thought I'd be glad to count calories.

The Funnies - An Out-Late View (1894)

Brown - "That's my new house, sure, but (hic) I didn't notices it was so awfully crooked (hic). It's not safe."

Judge's Library, January 1894

The Funnies Special Edition - New Years Then and Now (1917)

A Happy New Year - 1867

A Happy New Year - 1917

Happy New Year

With all the politics and discontent, the coming year is likely to be about as ugly as a potato in a hat carrying an umbrella. So why not begin 2017 with a card featuring...well...a potato wearing a hat, carrying an umbrella? Here's wishing you and yours the happiest and most prosperous of years, may all the blemishes be superficial and your potatoes be sweet ones.

For New Years - The Merry Widow

Something for the New Years Ball?

Happy New Years!

Here's wishing you a great 2016!

Philosophy for Dieting by Sophie Tucker

With all the resolving going on today, much of it revolving around self-loathing, losing weight, toning up, and going on a this or that diet, I figured I'd offer you a look at the other side of the coin. Here's I Don't Want to Get Thin from red-hot Sophie Tucker.

Happy New Year

My pals and I would like to wish you the happiest of New Years, may 2015 bring you health, wealth, and prosperity!

The Funnies - Turning Over a New Leaf (1914)

This one qualifies as 100 Years Ago Today and The Funnies!
Life Magazine, January 1914

In Case the Hair of the Dog Doesn't Work...

Just in case yesterday's post about the proverbial hair of the dog doesn't do the trick and you're too hungover to enjoy today's bowl games, here are a few possible solutions.

Genuine Aspirin, and you better say Bayer or God only knows what kind of quackery you'll wind up swallowing! This 1922 ad from Cosmopolitan (back when they did more than sex quizzes) gives the list of conditions for which you should pop an aspirin. Not too many people complain of lumbago any more and, for the most part, "rheumatism" has been replaced with good ol' arthritis. I'm guessing that a hangover would fall into the "pain, pain" category though no magazine of this era would expressly mention overindulgence in alcohol. In 1922 the insanity of Prohibition was in full force with federal agents and hatchet-wielding vigilantes like Carry Nation prowling the streets. Better to say you have a bad case of pain-pain than admit to buying bootleg hooch and face jail time or worse.

But what if we want to get right down to the source of our pain? What if we're interested in literally rooting out the cause and eliminating it all together? Well, we could reference this 1911 article from Pearson's Magazine entitled The Cure for Headaches. In it the author proposes that there are seven causes of headaches:

• Headaches from constipation
• The gluttonous headache
• The alcoholic headache
• The eye strain headache
• The catarrhal headache
• The sick headache
• The headache from chronic syphilis

Quite a list. We're concerned with the alcoholic headache in this post, but if you're interested catarrhal refers to inflammation of the mucous membranes. I guess old doc Maris wouldn't have felt he'd earned his white lab coat and stethoscope if he hadn't thrown in a few three-dollar words. I love the phrasing, "...more than one third of all headaches is the result of chemical embarrassments of some part of the digestive tract." The doctor goes on to compare headaches to disease caused by clogged sewers...and assuming your in the middle of a digestive embarrassment right now, I'll leave it at that. Dr. Maris' prescription - diet, exercise, and castor oil.

I think I'd go with the aspirin and a snooze on the couch, if I were you.

The Funnies - Welcome to the New Year

An extra funny page to welcome the New Year, 1919 marked the beginning of a year without the open warfare of World War I, but it also heralded a time of reckoning with the chaos and ugliness left in the wake of combat. Soon the false bravado of the 20's would obscure the memories of combat, the champagne and money would flow, Wall Street would fill one of its perennial bubbles with the hot air of impossible dreams, and humanity would Charleston into the abyss of World War II.

Here's to a year without war, a year when we are governed by wise and compassionate leaders, to a year of reasoned optimism undergirded by hard work and a strong conscience. Here's to 2014 and to hoping she will be a better year than her predecessor.

Rose Parade - 1904

I found this picture in the 1904 issue of Sunset Magazine, 110 years ago the Rose Parade had nothing to do with football.

Closing the Ballroom New Year's Eve

A little song for the lovebirds lingering in the ballroom long after the balloons and confetti have fallen and the crowd's gone home.

Curing the Common Hangover

No doubt most of us will be raising a glass to bid 2013 a fond fare-thee-well and welcome in the New Year. While I heartily approve of this tradition (and intend on partaking myself), there’s always the harrowing experience of a New Year’s Day spent feeling like the dregs of a dog’s dinner to think about. Yes, party hearty and pay dearly seems to be the motto where drinking is concerned for even though the US Mail doesn’t deliver on New Year’s Day, Mr. Hangover definitely will be making house calls.

Doubtless humankind discovered the hangover the night after discovering how to produce alcoholic beverages. Since that fateful morning partiers have sought cures for the fatigue, nausea, light and sound sensitivity, dizziness, and skull-crushing headache brought on by a night spent in the bottle. Unfortunately, the passing eons have failed to yield up a remedy for this scourge.

It seems a little odd that humanity never has come up with a cure for the common hangover. I mean since the Stone Age we’ve been fermenting various ingredients, indulging in the mind-altering results, and presumably suffering for the ensuing ill but in the age of rovers on Mars we’re still not sure how to treat Brown Bottle Flu. The best the Mayo Clinic has to offer is drink lots of water, eat a bland snack, take two aspirin, and sleep it off. Sometimes you think they’re not even trying.

What did our ancient (and not-so-ancient) ancestors do when the party they had last night went sour in the morning? Well, here are some folk remedies for hangover – and be forewarned, I do not endorse or recommend any of these for reasons that I think will be obvious.

A Hat-full of Alder Leaves: Some Native American tribes in the Rockies recommended that a wife place the leaves of an alder tree under her husband’s hat not only as a treatment for hangover but general grumpiness. Seems like finding your hat filled with foliage might actually cause grumpiness rather than relieve it. Finding one’s fedora stuffed with twigs and leaves after a night in the ruts might leave a fellow wondering exactly what he’d gotten into before finding his way home.

Headache Flower: In Britain a common folk remedy for hangover was chewing the seeds of wild poppies. It’s important to say that your average poppy seed muffin isn’t going to produce any ill effects, but chow down on a large amount and you might just take a trip in William S. Burroughs Dream Machine. You may already know poppies are used to produce morphine, once a key pain reliever, so it’s possible that the poppy seed cure might be the only effective treatment for a hangover – that is if you don’t mind Lewis Carol-style tea parties. The British post-party pharmacopeia also included betony, viper’s bugloss, mint, and yarrow.

The Hair of the Dog: Before Shakespeare’s time this phrase actually referred to a treatment for genuine dog bites. The idea was for the one who had been bitten to find the offending dog and pluck a few of its hairs, mix them with soot and hog fat and rub it into the wound as a cure – which might just result in needing more dog hair for the bites you receive while trying to treat your dog bite. In ancient medical texts this treatment usually was recommended for being bitten by a rabid dog. The use of the phrase “the hair of the dog that bit you" in reference to hangover treatments has been in use since Shakespeare's time.

The Bloody Mary: Much more pleasant than contemplating plucking hair from a rabid canine is imbibing a Bloody Mary the morning after a binge. Fernand Petiot claimed have invented the drink in 1921 while tending bar at the New York Bar in though this claim can be disputed. Gossip columnist Lucius Beebe printed one of the first US references to the Bloody Mary in 1939 in a column about New York’s 21 Club, including the original recipe:

"George Jessel’s newest pick-me-up which is receiving attention from the town’s paragraphers is called a Bloody Mary: half tomato juice, half vodka

Deep Fried: One thing the old remedies have in common with the Mayo Clinic is a belief that food can help stave off the effects of a hangover. However, the old cures tend to lean toward fatty and fried, high-calorie dishes. After a tough night at the forum, the ancient Romans treated a bad case of passum-head with a nice plate of deep-fried canaries. After an Olympic drinking marathon, the Greeks sought relief by devouring sheep's lungs. And medieval tavern-goers sought to cure their hangovers with a paste of eel and bitter almond. I guess, considering the options, sliders aren’t such a bad choice after all.

Folklore aside, my personal advice is all things in moderation. I’d recommend a little less drink for a lot less pain. Besides, it’ll mean a lot less un-tagging of embarrassing pictures on Facebook once you’re able to bear looking at the computer screen!

A Pre-New Year's Eve Message

Planning on enjoying a night of partying on New Years and then the bowl games on New Year's Day? Well, maybe you should watch this message from Century Productions!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Here's wishing you all the best in 2014!

Poems for New Year's Eve

Robert Burns

If you’re like most people, you can’t name a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. If you can, I salute you and recommend you get out more often. Burns wrote in the eighteenth century and is probably most well known for something a lot of people don’t realize he did. According to the website Burns Country, Burns wrote in a letter to an acquaintance, "There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. I shall give you the verses on the other sheet... Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians."

The song Burns spoke of was Auld Lang Syne, an ancient tune which is still sung at parties around the world to ring in the New Year. It’s impossible to say with certainty who wrote the original lyrics and its history is all but certain, Burns is generally credited with penning at least two stanzas of the version we’re familiar us:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

(Chorus)

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

Thomas Hardy

The popular tune Auld Lang Syne connects Burns (if only in a Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon way) to the English poet Thomas Hardy. Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper Bockhampton, in Southwestern England. By the end of the 19^th century, Hardy had established himself as a poet and taken residence in Dorchester where the ancient Scottish New Year’s Eve tune surely floated on the chilly wind as the old century came to an end and humanity rushed forward into the 1900’s.

On December 30, 1900 (the date that in Hardy’s mind marked the end of the 19^th century) Hardy wrote his poem, The Darkling Thrush. The somber poem reflects a darker image of the beginning of the age of ragtime and jazz than we’re used to.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

In Brittan New Years has a direct connection with poetry. For centuries the resident British Poet Laureate has been charged with the grand task of writing a poem to ring in the New Year. The tradition was established by Laureate Nahum Tate who penned eight New Year odes between 1693 and 1708. In fact, we owe the phrase "ring out the old, ring in the new" to Laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem, In Memoriam:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

That's a lot of poetry information for one day, but I think it's important to avoid myopically focusing on the west and it's poetic links with the turning year. Japanese poet and Buddhist priest, Kobayashi Issa, authored a pair of lovely haiku on the subject:

Kobayashi Issa

New Year’s Day

New Year's Day--

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

New Year’s Morning

New Year's morning:

the ducks on the pond

quack and quack.

Coleman Barks

I know I should dedicate more time to the subject of New Year's poetry, but I'd be here until next New Year's Eve and I'd still fail to do the subject justice. I wanted to close out with a modern American poet, something a little more accessible before heading off to celebrate the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.

New Year's Day Nap

by Coleman Barks

Fiesta Bowl on low.

My son lying here on the couch

on the "Dad" pillow he made for me

in the Seventh Grade. Now a sophomore

at Georgia Southern, driving back later today,

he sleeps with his white top hat over his face.

I'm a dancin' fool.

Twenty years ago, half the form

he sleeps within came out of nowhere

with a million micro-lemmings who all died but one

piercer of membrane, specially picked to start a brainmaking,

egg-drop soup, that stirred two sun and moon centers

for a new-painted sky in the tiniest

ballroom imaginable.

Now he's rousing, six feet long,

turning on his side. Now he's gone.